Having heard the Aplair 12Ps in a friend's system I have bought myself a pair. These will go into some existing OB baffles with a couple of 15 inch dipole bass units to provide extra substance low down.

In the meantime I'm putting some hours on the drivers using a baffle from another OB.

This got me thinking....which may be a bad thing....running in mono I tried one driver vs two drivers, trying to roughly match levels. Two drivers gave a bigger sound. I can't know how this would sound in stereo so my question is:

Would a small line array of two 12Ps be worth trying? I've seen plenty of Visaton B200s in arrays.

The two 12Ps would be in parallel as this is only about a 4R load. Should the 12Ps have their centres as close together as possible or should they be separated more in the manner of the temporary baffle above?

Or is this a lousy idea that kills the idea of using a great point source driver by producing two point sources?

They're too big. You can get away with using twin smaller units, but the output lobing from a couple of 6 1/2in drivers in 8in frames (which is what the A12 is) will be very obvious. You could low pass one of them to avoid these problems -bit of a waste IMO, but different strokes for different folks.

+1 to Scott's comment, and yes to the last sentence in your first post

If you've heard a well executed true line array with which you've been impressed and would like to emulate, my money's on it being composed of a much higher number of smaller FR drivers (3-4" seems to be a popular size) . With all but the cheapest of drivers, that can get to be expensive and complicated, and doesn't always pass WAF test.

What enclosures were the 12ps mounted in in your friend's system? I've heard this driver in 2 enclosures, in the SuperPensils I don't find them lacking bottom end extension or weight at all - in a smaller stand mount vented enclosure they were deficient.

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+1 to Scott's comment, and yes to the last sentence in your first post

If you've heard a well executed true line array with which you've been impressed and would like to emulate, my money's on it being composed of a much higher number of smaller FR drivers (3-4" seems to be a popular size) . With all but the cheapest of drivers, that can get to be expensive and complicated, and doesn't always pass WAF test.

What enclosures were the 12ps mounted in in your friend's system? I've heard this driver in 2 enclosures, in the SuperPensils I don't find them lacking bottom end extension or weight at all - in a smaller stand mount vented enclosure they were deficient.

It seems a twin 12P is not a great idea....I'm sticking with OBs as once you're hooked on OBs it's difficult to return to any speakers with a box.

Here's an example of a line array with 8 inch Visaton B200s, I've not heard them but given they were built by Paul Hynes I suspect they are good. People who've heard them like them.

The 12Ps my friend has are OB with one 18 inch dipole bass driver per channel plumbing the depths. I only use a couple of 15 inchers per side with DSP, pretty much flat down to 18Hz.

That said, the B200 has a rapidly narrowing polar response as frequency increases (a polite way of saying it beams something chronic) so with the limited HF dispersion, it might be marginally less susceptible to HF lobing & the apparent attendant HF losses (it's not a loss per se in technical terms, but that's the effect) than some others of similar size. As in 'might.' And 'marginally.' Eq will almost certainly still be needed, and some power-tapering likely wouldn't go amiss. The A12P, which has very broad HF dispersion for a relatively large widebander will almost certainly have even more problems.

Thanks for the views guys. I get the message why twined 12Ps aren't a good idea technically. I'm not bothered about the anti-OB sentiments as no speaker is perfect and we all have our own preferences. I happen to get on very well with OBs.